An Exercise in Self-Discipline

In my linguistics class, there is this girl.

And believe me – there is always one of these girls.

I tried so hard. I bit my tongue. I told myself that her awkwardness, her loudness, her persistent obliviousness to the fact that everyone in the class was tittering maliciously at every ignorant thing that came out of her mouth; all of these things were part of the way God made her. I didn’t even make so much as a peep when we were discussing the sad statistic that, on average, one language becomes extinct every two weeks, and she raised her hand to inflict impart this particular gem:

“But couldn’t it also be considered a good thing when a language goes extinct? I mean, it just means that they’ve found a better way to communicate, and their language just isn’t useful anymore. Why keep using a dying language when they’ve realized that everyone speaks English because it’s more useful, so they should just learn English so they can talk to everyone else?”

I didn’t argue, I didn’t mutter anything rude under my breath, and I didn’t even make that derisive little scoffing noise that drives everyone nuts and takes so much stupid effort to reign in. (I didn’t manage to harness my internal monologue quite as well, but I can only work on so many things at once.)

Finally, praise Jesus, I made it through every agonizing, stupid-comment-filled minute of the period and hauled hiney to my next class, which is a general literature survey that starts fifteen minutes later in another building. As you can probably guess, I had barely chosen a seat and settled into it before she walked in…

This semester will give me stomach ulcers. I just know it.